Bête Noire
by mypatronusisahorcrux
Summary: Jyn didn't remember a time in her life not plagued by nightmares, and on his worst days, when the sins of his past caught up with him, Cassian believed he deserved these haunting dreams, that they were penance for all the blood he'd shed. Pain recognizes pain, however, so the pair finds a way to weather the nightmares: together. Nonsexual Acts of Intimacy Prompts #7


**I keep swearing I'm going to wrap up the Nonsexual Acts of Intimacy Prompts, but I'm just having so much fun with them. Much thanks to Jenniferjuni-per for sending in this prompt: forehead or cheek kisses! Thank you very much :)**

 **Just for a reference, I picture Jyn's section very soon after Scarif, but Cassian's several years later, once the Rebellion is settled into Echo Base on Hoth.**

 **I do want to reiterate a warning here: Both Jyn and Cassian wake up in various states of panic attacks (Though I've never written one before, so I'm not sure how well I conveyed it here) and Cassian gets focused for a minute on some of his past assassinations, so if any of that bothers you, I would encourage you not to read!**

 **As always, I'd love to chat! Come say hi on Tumblr!**

Jyn didn't remember a time in her life not plagued by nightmares. Once, far away, safe in an apartment on Coruscant, a young Jyn Erso slept through the night without terror. If she did awaken from distressing dreams, as children did sometimes, her parents' bed was never far; her mother and father would pull her into their embrace, flooding her mind with love and comfort and ease to sleep through the night.

That was before Jyn Erso met real monsters on the shores of Lah'mu.

Monsters in white shooting her mother would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.

The list of terrible visions grew with Jyn: hiding in her hatch with no one to find her; the gleaming white armor of Stormtroopers searching the villages in which the Partisans hid; the first blood she'd spilled, not a 'trooper or a man bearing Imperial marks, but a civilian caught in the middle of a firefight; Maia's head flung backwards with the force of a blaster bolt; alone in the world, once again, at the age of sixteen; the screams of the crew of Rogue One, the crew that she led, along the beaches of Scarif; the million possible ways that she, and Cassian Andor and Bodhi Rook and the other members of the Rebellion, ran towards death on a daily basis.

Her father's voice hadn't calmed her back to sleep after a nightmare since she was a child, but Cassian Andor's did now. Sleeping nose to nose and chest to chest in a small, standard issue bed of the Rebellion didn't leave much room for privacy. At first, Jyn feared the familiarity of the arrangement; she knew how often she awoke shaking with fear from these dreams and didn't want to subject Cassian to her insomnia.

But her heart was weak and longing for the intimacy of human contact – of, specifically, his human contact – and so she stayed, wrapped in his arms every night they could.

A week passed and the fortress of his presence fought away the nightmares, but even the magic spells of true love couldn't last forever. As Jyn feared, she awoke one night, a scream bitten off behind her teeth, her chest tremoring in an attempt to regain control of her breathing. She bolted upright, knocking Cassian's arm away from her chest and startling the captain awake.

"I'm sorry," she groaned from between clinched teeth, "I'm sorry."

Pain recognized pain, however, and Cassian immediately understood. Her trembling body was in his arms in an instant, Cassian's hands rubbing up and down her arms, bringing warmth back to her freezing body.

"Tell me about it," Cassian whispered, kissing the salt water tracks on her cheeks. "Talk to me."

 _I can't_ , she wanted to tell him, but her throat clogged, stealing the words like the nightmares stole her sleep. She settled for shaking her head, pushing it against his chest. If she pulled him close enough, if she melted into him, the fear of the dream would recede; it just had to.

The dark of the room suffocated her, pressing in on all sides, like the collapse of her cave. Jyn tried to remember the details of the dream, what had brought her lungs to the brink of hyperventilating, but all she could recall were screams of the injured, the carbon scoring of blaster fire, a hot sun beating down against her. It could be one of many, many battlefields in Jyn's life. Without the distinction of people's faces, either friend or foe, Jyn had no way to distinguish between the guerilla skirmishes of her youth and the organized fights in Rebellion fatigues.

Lips against her forehead helped to center her, reminding her where she was. Not on the battlefield, not in danger of losing those she cared about, but in Cassian's bunk. The darkness was meant to relax, not oppress, to settle her for sleep, not to aggravate her mind out of it.

Jyn whimpered as Cassian pulled away. "I'm still here," he assured, sleep and concern thickening his accent. "Right here."

A light flickered on after a second, causing both Jyn and Cassian to flinch away from the sudden brightness. Jyn knew, logically, that electricity on base was rationed; by turning on his lamp hours past lights out, Cassian risked the ire of quartermaster and the head of the base.

Apparently Cassian was willing to risk it. For her.

Jyn had, in a moment of weakness after the destruction of the Death Star, told him about the cave collapsing around her, stealing all light and fire from her life. By the look Cassian gave her, she knew he remembered, knew he understood the fear pitch blackness put into her heart, into her mind. Settling back into sleep would be near to impossible without a light to guide her.

Without a word, Cassian pulled her back into his arms, his lips pressing against her forehead once again. One thumb stroked along her temple in an even, steady beat as he held her close. With the other hand, he grabbed her right palm, gently placing it on his chest. The calm _thumpthump_ of his heart echoed under her hand, and his chest rose and fell in a soothing cadence.

"When I breathe, you breathe," he instructed her, and she did her best to follow. Her tears and fears kept hitching her breath, breaking the rhythm she tried to desperately to follow.

Jyn isn't sure how long it takes – minutes, hours – but eventually her breaths evened out, able to match the deep expansion and collapse of Cassian's chest. When her mind as well as her breathing felt settled, Jyn leaned away, as Cassian had done before, to turn off the light. The room plunged again into darkness, but Jyn reached for Cassian's hand and felt safe, secure.

Cassian laid back against the pillows and Jyn stared down at him for a second. Though she could see little more than the pale outline of his face, Jyn swore she knew what comforting expression he wore.

"Thank you," she whispered into the darkness.

Leaning up on his elbow, Cassian pulled her down for another kiss to her forehead, one to each of her cheeks.

"For you, Jyn, anytime."

* * *

On his worst days, when the sins of his past caught up with him, flooding over him so that he could barely breathe, Cassian believed he deserved these haunting dreams, that they were penance for all the blood he'd shed.

On his good days – Cassian wasn't sure he had anything that qualified as his "best days" anymore – he would reassure himself what he had done needed to be done for the Rebellion. That someone needed to do it, and he would rather the job fell to him rather than damning another poor soul to this same job.

Or, at least, he did tell himself that. Before Scarif. Before Jyn Erso had wound her way into his life, his heart, his bed. Now, good days or bad, she slept beside him, a warm body to ground him and a hand to hold if needed. His good days meant pulling her closer, breathing in the warm scent that came from her hair, her skin.

But tonight was one of the bad days.

Tonight he gripped at his hair in an attempt to stay silent, dug in nails into his arms to pull the images of targets – Imperial governors and sympathizers as well as innocents, men like Tivik and Galen Erso – falling from the shot of his lethal sniper rifle out of his head.

Physical pain, Cassian always reasoned, healed much more easily than mental pain. Raised in a war, Cassian could dress a wound before he could shave, so small nicks along arms meant little to him.

His ragged breathing, however, sounded too much like that of a man being chased, a man who feared danger and _ran._ In the light of the day, in the description of his job, Cassian Andor was a man who chased, not a man who was chased.

How the tides turned when the sun set and he closed his eyes to sleep. All the men and women he killed on the job, all the lives he ended, returned at night, raised from the dead by his brain. They wandered into his locked barracks, one by one, leaning against his desk or standing over his bed, sometimes staying silent, sometimes reminding him of their stolen lives: husbands and wives and children and people who mourned them.

Which was more than Cassian had for a great many years.

Now, though, now the one woman he needed to protect – from the war, from the memories trapped inside his head – slept beside him, inches away from his pulsing heart and uneven breathing, halfway between him and the ghosts of his past. He tried, oh how he _tried_ , to keep her away from his darkest moments, to let her sleep through his torture.

But she knew; she always knew.

Rolling towards him, still half asleep, she mumbled, "Cassian? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he attempted to school the uneven timbre of his voice into something more neutral. "Go back to sleep, Jyn."

Of course she didn't; of course he knew she wouldn't, but he had to try.

She leaned up on one elbow, the opposite hand resting on his chest. Her lips caressed his cheek with tenderness as her hand rubbed along his breastbone.

"It's alright," Jyn murmured against his skin, "I'm right here."

But tonight's tormentor, an Imperial governor with the neat bullet hole through his temple, innocently small on the left but a gaping chasm on the right – Cassian couldn't regret his death Force knows how many years ago now, knowing that the galaxy was safer with him dead, but he could regret the stain of blood on his hands – still paced the room, too close to Jyn, too close to the woman he loved…

"Cassian." Jyn's face filled his vision, replacing the image of the dead governor. "Don't think about the dreams. Focus on your surroundings."

He nodded, familiar with Jyn's post-nightmare routine. She's used it for years with him; he could mouth her questions along with her as she asked them, run himself through the process if he wanted, but he always allowed her to take the lead. Something about the soothing tone of her voice helped to ground him.

"Where are you?"

"Our quarters on Echo Base. Hoth."

For each question he answered, Jyn rewarded him with a kiss, this one to his temple.

"What do you hear?"

He strained his ears to listen past the walls of their room, back into the Rebel base. "I hear the generators heating the base. Patrols in the next corridor."

This time, a kiss to his cheek.

"What do you feel?"

Cassian stared up and Jyn, her face only a few inches above his, and reached out to cup her cheek. "You. I feel your warmth in my bed, your head under my hand, the feeling you left in my chest."

It isn't _I love you,_ but it's about as close as Cassian's ever come to saying those words. With the way Jyn's eyes soften, the way her lips tenderly caress his forehead with this kiss, he knows she understands.

"Are you okay to sleep?" Jyn asks quietly.

This time, Cassian closes the distance between them with a kiss of thanks to her forehead.

"With you by my side? Always."


End file.
